


Up Against Me

by lindenwaverly



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, British Jess, Discussions of sexism, F/F, Lots of plot, Mutual Pining, how do babies work I don't know, some porn, these two fucking idiots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-05-14 12:59:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14770095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lindenwaverly/pseuds/lindenwaverly
Summary: Carol comes to Jess when an enemy she thought was dead resurfaces, and lingering traumas come to light. But when Carol's whole life is destroyed, Jess is left to fight desperately to help her friend when she doesn't seem to want to help herself. And then there's all that lingering sexual tension..AKA Clint Barton is a Good Friend but a Terrible Person and should stop making cocktails to celebrate important sexual milestones in his friends lives





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic draws on Carol being imprisoned, mind controlled and raped by Marcus Immortus. No actual rape is going to happen within the story, which is why I haven't used the archive warning, but it does deal heavily with the aftermath. 
> 
> In addition, I headcanon Carol as someone with a lot of internalised misogyny, and that's going to show up in this fic in the form of her saying some pretty awful stuff. 
> 
> Finally, I have no idea how babies work. Do they have teeth? Can they crawl? How much do they cry? Gerry is a Perfect Baby because I have no idea how to write actual baby problems.

When Jess awoke, for a second she was in Madripoor again. The deathly click-click-click of the ceiling fans, and that strange greenish light that was everywhere, and the same click-click-click inside her mind, even when she was away from that hotel room – _you're going insane, keep it together, you're going insane, you're going insane._

But then she was in New York again, and Gerry was in his cot, burbling softly.

“Shh, shh,” she whispered, even though he was quiet.

The light was on in her kitchen.

Through the door, she could see Carol slumped in one of her chairs. She hadn't moved, even though she had to be aware that Jess was up now, but she wasn't injured. Well, that was all right. If Carol wanted to play silly buggers, Jess could play along. She took her time, putting on a red silk bathrobe and combing her hair to make herself a bit more presentable. She thought about brushing her teeth but didn't – toothpaste always made her feel slightly sick. When she finally padded into the kitchen, the coffee maker was humming to itself. Carol's version of being a considerate house guest.

“Not that I don't love these dramatic middle of the night meetings - “ she said, then stopped, because Carol looked wrecked. That was the thing about Carol's face – you never saw ho much effort she was putting into her composure until it broke, like a pain you get used to till it suddenly stops. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused, but she didn't look drunk. She looked terrified. She was staring at a point beyond Jess, through Jess.

“Carol,” she said. “What's wrong?” When Carol didn't reply, she walked over and wrapped her arms around her, burying her face in her hair. She felt Carol tense, just for a second, then relax. Still, even now, that instinctual resistance to tenderness, the refusal to trust it.

“I fucked up,” said Carol. The words sounded like they were pulled from her by force, and Jess pulled her closer till she was almost sitting in Carol's lap, curled around her.

“You always fix it.”

“Not this time. This time, I - “ she swallowed. “Oh god, Jess, if they only kick me out of the Avengers it will be the best case scenario.”

“Tell me. Tell me and we'll fix it together – Carol, darling, I'd do anything.”

She felt Carol turn her head, and for a second she felt lips on her neck – but then they were gone, and she dismissed it as wishful thinking. Carol clung on to her, her grip almost painful, and Jess could feel how much she was holding back. The tragedy of super-strength – you could never get the comfort of just crushing someone to your chest because you might literally crush them. Not that Carol would have sought that anyway. The casual misery of her childhood had seen to that.

“What's wrong, love,” she said, but with no real pressure behind the words. That was something friendship with Carol had taught her – sometimes you didn't need advice or a listening ear. Sometimes you just needed to sit there for a while, while someone else was strong for you, and then you could fly away and fight your own battles.

She was so lost in thought and the smell of Carol's hair – citrus, with hints of ozone – that she missed it the first time Carol murmured it.

“What was that?”

“Marcus Immortus is back.”

Her first instinct was to pull away and start bombarding Carol with questions. Well, no. Her first instinct was to tear into the night, leather and red and poison, and find him with fear pheromones singing through her and make him scream and scream and scream. She covered for her shock by re-arranging her arms. Carol didn't come here for an Avenger of any kind.

“I thought he was dead,” she said, her voice neutral.

Carol hiccupped a sob. “So did I. I really thought- it doesn't matter.” She pulled away from Jess, wiping her hand over her eyes. “There's some good news, at least. At least I know I'm not a murderer.

Not a murderer? But Marcus had killed himself by accident, ageing into dust. And then the pieces fell into place, and she looked into Carol's eyes, those eyes heavy with guilt.

“His machines stopped working,” whispered Carol, never breaking eye contact. “Or maybe he stopped using them, I don't know. I think in his twisted mind, he really thought I loved him. There was still something in my mind, keeping me compliant, but I started to get more – aware, maybe? I don't know. It just started to creep up on me. Like something coming towards you in the dark, and you can only hear it. And then one day I just knew. And I – I just.” She closed her eyes. “I don't want to say I was in an altered state, because that's not why. But I was – I was detached, when I did it. Even when I was beating him to death, it was just something that was happening. I know what that makes me. I tortured him with my bare hands. I heard him beg.”

Jess sat down stiffly on the table, looking at Carol and the waves of pain and self-hatred radiating off her. She thought about reaching for her, about saying _of course you didn't feel anything, you were in survival mode, your brain can't handle these things so it shuts down._ But she knew Carol wouldn't hear her.

“Good,” she said instead.

“Good?”

“I'm glad he suffered.” She resisted the urge to smile at Carol's astonishment. “I never claimed to be a good person.”

“I lied to the Avengers.”

_The same Avengers who abandoned you to that monster in the first place,_ she wanted to say, but didn't. Instead, she said, “They'll understand.”

“You sound confident. Look at what happened to Bobbi.”

Bobbi Morse. That was another memory, right after What Happened To Bobbi had Happened To Bobbi and Clint was still ranting and railing through the divorce. He'd been on another misery fit, drunk and irritating, and he'd turned to Carol and said “When it happened to you...”. “Nothing like that ever happened to me,” snapped Carol, and Clint (and Tony and Steve, who'd been arguing at the end of the table) had fallen gratifyingly silent.

“How do you know he's back?”

“He wrote me a letter,” she said, and waved the hand that had been hanging limply at her side, showing Jess a small cream page, expensive paper. “Said he forgave me, and he still loves me. You know, typical supervillain stuff. Included a nice little gift. Apparently, he had security systems up, even in limbo. Including cameras. Sent me a memory stick with our final fight on. He was careful not to outright say that he'd release it if I didn't go back to him, but the implication was clear.”

“Did he give you any way of getting in contact with him?”

“No. He just said he'd find me when I had my answer. That was yesterday.”

“Ok. I'm going to need the letter. And the memory stick too. Envelope?”

“Hand delivered. What are we going to do?”

“What I am going to do is spy stuff. What you are going to do is go to sleep, because I'm betting you haven't slept since yesterday.

“Jess - “

“Carol. Listen to me. Let me help you on this, me and my people. When we find him, then we can decide what to do, and you can go in being full punchy lady and give this asshole what he deserves. But for now, you sleep.”

Carol looked like she wanted to argue, so Jess moved closer to her and pulled her to her feet. She meant to push her to the bedroom, but something in her chest seized when she touched Carol, and so instead she wound her arms around her. Carol was unusually tall for a woman, and Jess was a little on the short side, making her a whole head shorter and just the right height to turn her head to the side and lean on her chest, listening to Carol's heart.

“Why don't you hate me,” whispered Carol. “All I do, time after time, is fuck up.”

“I think that's just the human condition,” whispered Jess, and smiled when she felt the warm breath of Carol's laugh in her hair. Carol's fingers were splayed on her neck, moving in warm circles.

Jess released her and pushed her towards the bedroom. In motion, it was impossible to deny how tired Carol was. Her arms hung limply by her sides; her steps small and slow. This wasn't the kind of exhaustion mere lack of sleep gave you. It was what happened when the world sucked everything out of you that you had left to give, and then kept sucking. In the bedroom, Carol was too tired to undress, so Jess helped her, peeling off her uniform. She was naked underneath, the hard lines of her muscled stomach and the delicate groove of her hipbones laid out under Jess's fingers as she peeled her out of the suit. She felt the old familiar flare of arousal at the sight of Carol's body, but that was allowable, and ignorable.

“Don't worry about Gerry,” she whispered as she re-arranged the blankets. “He sleeps through the night now.”

“Have fun doing spy stuff,” murmured Carol, and then she was asleep.

 

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Are Jess and Logan even friends in canon? Who cares! Time is fake and so are canonical relationships.

The good thing about working with spies was that they kept odd hours, so you never had to worry about waking anyone up. The bad thing about working with spies was that they insisted on choosing their own locations for meetings, and when you were working with _these_ particular spies it was always somewhere that served alcohol strong enough to overcome a healing factor or a Russian constitution, which meant a dive. They were in the back of a disgusting little bar, owned by someone whose great-grandfather had either been aided or killed by either Logan or Natasha or possibly both, she wasn't sure. Natasha was possibly drinking paint thinner. Logan's beer had something floating in it. Jess had ordered a club soda, taken one look at the overlapping lipstick stains on the edge of her glass, and left it untouched.

Logan was scowling down at the picture Jess had handed him. “Is this the guy we're after? Why does he look like he's crapping his pants?”

It was true. The best still of Marcus's face she'd been able to pull from the video had been right before Carol's fists had descended on him, just as he'd realised what was going to happen. Jess had enjoyed that part of the video. She hadn't enjoyed the rest of it.

“His name is Marcus,” she said, “but he's probably not using that name. There are no known aliases because he's never used one before. He's – new here. He looked like five years ago, but he's suffered some serious injuries since then, and we're not sure of the extent of his healing. It could be he's gotten some serious scarring, but he has access to high-level tech. He was in the New York area yesterday, on Ellis Island, probably trying to evade security.”

Logan grunted. “Any powers? Or a last name?”

“No superpowers, but he is a genius. And he might be surrounded by temporal anomalies, but he also might not be. And no, no last name.” She wasn't going to give them the Immortus connection – that would bring too much attention, and they might insist on getting others involved. She briefly considered that he might be using Marcus Danvers, but her stomach twisted at the thought and she dismissed it.

Logan grunted. Natasha wasn't saying anything. She was just studying the picture, then studying Jess.

“So let me get this straight,” said Logan. “You want us to find someone called Marcus, no last name, probably using an unknown alias, who might look like this but might not, who visited the Statue of Liberty yesterday during peak tourist season, and who's a genius.”

“Yeah,” said Jess. “And you can't ask why.” She looked at Natasha, who still hadn't said anything. Natasha looked back at her.

“O-kay,” said Logan. “Look, I trust you if you say it's urgent, and I'll throw my weight around, but I'm betting Tasha here is going to need a few more reasons for SHEILD than 'because Jess said so,' and SHEILD-level resources are the only thing I can think of that could make a manhunt with this little information work.”

“That's the thing,” said Jess. “I need you to keep this one completely off books. No one not in this bar finds out about it. I understand if this is the point where you back out.”

Logan sighed heavily. Natasha was still silent, just looking at Jess, and it was beginning to annoy the fuck out of her.

“Anything you want to say, Widow?” She'd blurted it before she could help herself. Great, now she was throwing a tantrum as well as asking the impossible. Every time she felt like she'd actually earned her place alongside the Black Widow in the field, something would happen and Natasha would turn those unblinking, impossible eyes on her, and Jess would feel about two inches tall. 

“Who are we protecting?” said Natasha. “Because it's not you.”

“No one who's done anything that breaks our moral code.” She kept her voice even.

Natasha smiled. “Well, our moral code is more flexible than most.” She rose, slipping the photo into her pocket. “Marcus, you say? I'll get it done.” Then she moved through the crowd, graceful as a shark, and slipped into foot-traffic outside too quick for Jess to catch.

“She's a cold fish,” said Logan. “But hey, kid, so are you I'll find your man.” And then he rose too, pulling his hat down low and leaving far less gracefully than Natasha.

Jess sighed, and then slipped out of the back exit, pulling on her goggles as she went. Work to do, evil rapists from another dimension to find. Typical Thursday night.

 

* * *

 

 

When Carol woke up, it was still dark and Jess still wasn't back. Her body ached with exhaustion, but she could hear the first little notes of birdsong and sleeping wasn't doing her any favours. Her dreams had all been of limbo, which was odd because she barely remembered it when conscious. There were few images of that time in her head, except for Marcus's last moments, and even they were hazy. But her subconscious must have remembered, because in her dreams she was immersed completely in it, trapped there, a smile that wasn't her own dancing across her lips, and something rustling, maybe the heavy gowns she dimly remembered Marcus picking out for her. The gowns had been his mothers, she knew that. She imagined they'd been heavy and old-fashioned – he'd told her his mother had been snatched from the late nineteenth century. Had she worn a corset? Had he laced her up into it?

She rolled onto her other side and out of bed, pushing back her thoughts. The Danvers way of dealing with things. Get up, shower, make coffee. She wasn't sure when Gerry needed to be fed. She'd google it. For now, he was sleeping peacefully. She lingered over him for a few moments, looking at his tiny hands, his tiny feet kicking. He was astonishingly beautiful.

After her shower, she threw on some of Jess's clothes – her uniform stank, and she could have used her molecular control to clean it, but she didn't want to be dressed for work today. Jess's clothes were snug on her, and not her usual style. She still dressed the part of the Californian PI she'd been when Carol met her, tough but sexy. Back during the New Avengers days, Jess – Veranke – had kept some of Carol's clothes in her apartment, so often had she stopped over. Another time she'd been manipulated, another thing she could never tell anyone about. Jess's warm mouth under hers, kind but resistant, when Carol had finally worked up the nerve to kiss her. _I'm sorry,_ she'd said. _I won't make this awkward if you don't. We're still friends._

Well. They were still friends, and fuck-you-very-much Veranke. The only good thing about the whole Skrull mess was that Jess had never found out about Carol's awkward pass at her.

She was so absorbed in her thoughts about fake-Jess that she started when real Jess touched her on the shoulder.

“Hey. You're up.”

“So are you.”

Jess yawned. “Not for much longer. I was out all night.”

“Find anything useful?”

“Not yet. I've got people working on it.”

“Thank you. I mean it.”

She shrugged. “De nada. Hey, if I grab a couple hours sleep, will you watch Gerry? Rogers coming to watch him at six, but I'll be up before then. His feeding schedule is stuck to the fridge.”

“Of course. When does he wake?”

“Any minute now. I'm going to watch a movie to put me to sleep. Join me.”

Carol knew was being looked after, given distractions – first a movie, then a baby, then whatever else Jess cooked up. She couldn't bring herself to care. Time with Jess was worth knowing you were being patronised. They put on a nature documentary, something about the savannah, and slumped on the couch, Jess a warm line by her side. About halfway through there was a cry from the bedroom, and when Jess got up and came back with Gerry she lay down across the sofa with the baby on her stomach and her head in Carol's lap, all her beautiful hair spread across her thighs. An antelope was getting ripped apart on screen. It was pretty much heaven.

Eventually, Jess shook herself and handed Gerry to Carol. “Ok, I'm gonna crash. Feed him in about an hour. Otherwise you can just put him on the floor and let him play with his bricks, as long as you don't leave the door open and keep an eye on where he crawls.”

“Taking care of babies is way less effort than I'd imagined it to be.”

Jess pressed a kiss to Gerry's forehead. “Well, this one's spectacular.”

“The spectacular spider-baby.”

“Don't give him any ideas. No superheroing until he's eighteen. And no meeting Peter till he's eighteen, either.”

Carol finished up the documentary after Jess had gone, pointing out the names of the animals to him with cartoonish over-exaggeration while he looked at her with fascinated, alien eyes. He cried for a little bit when there where some elephants on the screen that were clearly the most terrifying thing in the world, and Carol was trying to soothe him while scrabbling around hopelessly for the remote when luckily some meerkats came on, which soothed him. She fed him, and read to him, and then an hour later fed him again and decided it was probably time to make lunch for herself. Would Jess mind? Probably not, but it would be best if she went to check if she wanted anything, anyway – she presumably hadn't eaten since yesterday.

She had the door to Jess's bedroom halfway open when she heard voices. Someone was talking in a low murmur. She heard Jess's English accent, and then someone else, American with a touch of Europe thrown in there.

“... know why you're looking for him,” the other voice was saying.

“You don't know what you think you do,” said Jess. “This isn't some quest for revenge.”

“Are you sure? I'm sure it isn't for you, but for Carol - “

“Natasha, do you trust me?” Natasha. Black Widow.

“Stupid question. I thought I taught you not to ask those.”

“Fine. Do you trust me in the field? Do you feel that you know I'm not going to go off book.”

“Of course.”

“That's how it is between me and Carol, ok? I can just trust her.”

Carol moved slightly, changing the angle of her vision. Jess was in a white vest and underwear, looking positively pornographic. The vest had probably been full-length at one point, but now it was tight enough to ride up over her stomach, showing off the way her waist flared into her hips. Carol bit her lip to make herself stop staring. Natasha was in her catsuit, toying idly with the ring of her zipper and flashing her best femme fatale smile.

“Is that how it is.” She leant over Jess, and Jess – Jess didn't lean back, Jess smiled and moved into her touch. “Between you and Carol? The same as it is between you and me?”

She could hear the laugh in Jess's voice. “Not _exactly_ like with you and me.”

“I could stay. I'm very stressed. I've been working very hard. I'm sure you have to.”

Jess shook her head. “Carol and Gerry are next door. Thank you for the intel. You want a coffee or something?”

“I am going to have a vodka martini,” drawled Natasha, “and then I am going to have a nap.” She moved to the window and, just before she slipped out, looked right at Carol and winked. She'd known. She'd known she was there the whole time.

Jess turned away and caught Carol, looking suddenly guilty. “Oh. Hey.”

“Hey. I was going to make lunch.”

“Thanks. That was Natasha. She thinks she has a lead on Marcus.

“Natasha is the 'people' you said you had on it?”

“Her and Logan. I had to show them Marcus' face so they had something to work with, and I know Natasha probably cross-referenced it through the Avengers database, but neither of them knows anything about – neither of them knows anything they didn't know.” She stretched and padded across the room and past Carol, pulling on the same robe she'd been wearing yesterday. “I'm sorry. I wouldn't have asked them if I didn't think time was a factor. Also, I clearly need better security on this flat. That's twice in twenty-four hours that someone's broken in.”

“I wasn't concerned about Natasha being on the case.” There was something wrong with her voice – she'd meant that to come out reassuring, but instead it sounded flat, passive-aggressive.

“What were you concerned about, then?” Jess's shoulders were tensed, but she was keeping her back to Carol, searching through the fridge. “Do you fancy seafood? I've got some shrimp in here.”

“I was wondering how long you'd been sleeping with the Black Widow.”

Jess froze, and then continued pulling ingredients out of the fridge. “Interesting. She's Natasha when she's working on the case, but Black Widow when she's sleeping with me. Also interesting is how you think it's any of your business.”

“I didn't realise that my best friend's love life was now a taboo subject.”

Jess had come round the kitchen island and was now facing her, one hand holding a knife, the other steadying a lettuce on a chopping board. “It is when you're standing there looking like a thunderstorm.”

“Come on, Jess. Natasha is a great Avenger, but manipulating the people she sleeps with is her MO.”

“Yeah, using other's sexual attraction to you to win a fight. What a despicable thing to do. God, can you imagine if someone used, I don't know, _pheromones_ to do that.”

“You're conflating things.” Her voice was still doing that thing, where she meant it to sound calm and instead it sounded furious. She should stop this, calm it down, but she was beginning to realise she was furious, actually.

“How am I conflating - “

“Those are your powers! It's not part of some twisted femme fatale shtick you put on, some 'oh look, I'm the sexy, sexy spy, let's wrap everything in seventeen layers of secrets and play mind games with my team-mates' - “

“She's not fucking asking to be found sexy!” Jess banged her fist on the surface. The lettuce jolted and rolled sadly to the floor. “It's not her fault that men see a woman being a brilliant agent and go 'Well that gives me a boner, so I guess that must be her fault.'”

“Oh don't give me that “men sexualise her” bullshit, she plays into it, she _uses_ it.”

“And what would you have her do?”

“I don't know, not be like that? Fight against it? I spent my entire life having to fight to prove that we didn't sleep our way to the top, that we're actually superheroes in our own right and not just because our legs look good in spandex, and she's out there playing right into it, practically flaunting it.”

Jess's voice was low and dangerous. “Oh gosh, Carol, you're right. We should all just pretend that sexism and sexualization don't exist, and keep our heads up and stay in the boys club and fuck anyone who doesn't buy into that macho bullshit. You know I admire you for the way you just stride past sexism like it's nothing but don't you dare shit on those of us who take what the world throws at them and leans into it and uses it because _that's what you do when you're a spy,_ Carol! You don't get to tell anyone who calls you sweetheart to go fuck themselves because you're undercover, you take their expectations and turn it into a weapon - "

“Exactly! She turns it into a weapon, and she's using it against you!”

Jess's mouth hung open limply for a second. “She's not – she's not getting anything from this. We're partners. I'm not a mark, I'm her equal.”

“The Black Widow doesn't think anyone is her equal.”

Jess shut her eyes. Her grip on the knife was very tight. When she spoke again, her voice was very calm. She didn't open her eyes.

“I think you should go. I'll update you if there's anything new on the case.”

Well, that seemed about right for her life. She was going to be kicked out of the Avengers anyway, might as well get a head start on destroying relationships. Always an overachiever and all that. She stalked into the bedroom to grab her uniform. When she came back into the kitchen, Jess was chopping the lettuce very fast. She was looking at the board. She wasn't looking at Carol.

She could stop. _I'm sorry,_ she could say. _I was just worried, and maybe a little bit jealous, and maybe I'm kind of mad because I didn't know you liked girls and now I'm wondering if I missed my chance with you, and also I'm sort of a little bit in love with you, and if there's any part of that that sounds interesting to you please let me know because my life is falling apart._

“You should wash that,” she muttered instead, and resisted the urge to slam the apartment door on her way out.

 


End file.
